USA TODAY International Edition
Oakland fires its 7th police chief since 2016
Department has faced crime, staffing issues
The Oakland Police Department has lost its seventh head of police in as many years after an investigation found the California city’s top cop mishandled two officer misconduct cases.
“I am no longer confident that Chief Armstrong can do the work needed to continue much needed reforms,” Oakland’s new mayor, Sheng Thao, said Wednesday after she fired Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who was hired less than two years ago.
The move is the latest setback for a department struggling with violent crime, staffing issues and an inability to complete court- ordered reforms in decades past.
The mayor said she fired Armstrong after a probe concluded the chief and the department failed to properly investigate and discipline a sergeant involved in a hit- and- run with his patrol car in 2021 and – in a separate incident – fired his service weapon in an elevator at police headquarters.
The firing comes exactly one month after the mayor and the city’s administrator announced they had placed Armstrong on paid leave, citing a report by an independent law firm saying Armstrong had violated department rules because he didn’t review evidence from the misconduct cases before closing the investigations.
The probes by the San Franciscobased law firm of Clarence Dyer and Cohen concluded Armstrong failed to investigate and discipline Sgt. Michael Chung after he was involved in a hitand- run with a parked car in 2021 at his apartment building in San Francisco, according to a report first obtained by KTVU- TV and made public by Oaklandside, a local news site.
Thao, who took office in January, said she wants to be confident the police chief in the city of 400,000 people will be effective “in making improvements that can be recognized by the federal monitor, the federal court and the people of Oakland.”
“In response to a public report that concluded that OPD had repeatedly failed to rigorously investigate misconduct and hold officers accountable, Chief Armstrong said these were not incidents where officers behaved poorly,” Thao said during a news conference Wednesday.
Thao said it would be “inappropriate” to publicly discuss the discipline cases that prompted Armstrong’s firing. Armstrong, a native of Oakland, was appointed in 2021 with promises of enacting all the court- ordered reforms within a year.
He said he was disappointed in Thao’s decision and that once all the facts are evaluated, it will be clear he committed no misconduct and his termination was “wrong, unjustified, and unfair.”